Viper Rendezvous VI at Motorsport Park Hastings, 2015

photos and basic story/captions by Bill Loutzenheiser

The Viper Rendezvous is a two-and-a-half-day track weekend for Dodge Viper owners at the Motorsport Park Hastings in Nebraska. Participants could opt to have an instructor ride along. The track itself was designed by Alan Wilson, and the organizers claimed that it was easy for novices to learn while being challenging for advanced drivers; large runoff spaces help increase safety.

Typically, the event garnered drivers from around ten states. Categories include Sportsman (still street-legal but with modified exhaust, intakes, and shocks allowed), and modified (more engine modifications, a few with short wings, and roll bars; most of these had license plates). There was also an unlimited class, whose members tended to have many sponsors’ stickers — these were fast.

This is the Factory 2015 GTS that showed up with it driver and SRT Chief Engineer Graham Henckel. They broke it on Friday night, no-one said what they broke.

This Jeep Grand Cherokee SRT pulled a trailer to the track with a Viper on it (license plate obfuscated).

Local class 1...

His and hers — she drives the blue one, and was a much more aggressive driver than her other half.

Local cars that are faster than they look...

Fancy garages on the track, with a four car garage and a nice house, or cabin upstairs.

Staging again.

Changing from race tires with black rims to showy tires and rims for a photo shoot.

Photoshoot that spelled out MPH, which will be on the track’s web page (from above).

A local doctor and his stock class Dodge Viper.

My Ram with the Ecodiesel: I had a lot of racers stop me while I drove in, curious on how I liked it.

Klatt Racing has three NASCAR class cars racing this year, all his crew come back for the winter and early spring every year; they are out using parts of the track to set up the cars. The front of their shop has antique style gas pumps; my shop makes the castings, and Gas Pump Heaven in Omaha sells them.

I grew up with most of the gear heads. George, the track manager, was two houses south of me, Bryon “Dusty” Kohl is the safety director and we did school and scouts; he did safety for a living for NASCAR. In my youth I had a 1957 MG-a and a 1966 Triumph GT-6, and wish I had kept them both. I did more drag racing with a friend’s 1955 Chevy B-MP 427 and I still like rats, I have a few in my garage in pieces. I also had a 1955 Bel Air with 454 and a B&M 400 turbo.